Angel Marcloid of Fire-Toolz and Nonlocal Forecast
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Angel Marcloid has been releasing captivating cross-genre music under a range of aliases since the early ‘90s. The sound of Fire-Toolz, her most prominent project, recalls the overstimulation of sampledelica like the Dust Brothers or DJ Shadow, but formed out of serrated guitar riffs and synth programming rather than funk and soul samples. On May’s Rainbow Bridge, the chaos coheres into a touching album-length tribute to a deceased pet, the cat Breakfast.
Marcloid released the second album under her Nonlocal Forecast moniker at the end of October. Holographic Universe(s?)! is a serene yet propulsive blend of jazz fusion, prog rock, and new age, the Sunday afternoon following the Friday night excesses of Fire-Toolz. Rather than prepare a playlist, she made an EXCLUSIVE mix of rare smooth jazz and fusion, which you can stream and download below. I spoke to Marcloid in mid-November from her new home in Woodstock, IL about her different musical identities, her ideal living situation, and the difficulties of moving three cats.
I was surprised when I saw the tracklist and realized you had put some songs together in your mix. Is “mash-up” the right term for that?
It’s a mash-up in a very simple way. Usually when you think of mash-up, you think of something in time and pitch matched, but this is just layered. Because the jazz tracks were loose and didn’t have much drumming, it works really well under something equally as abstract but not melodic in any way. There’s no note clashing or anything, it fits perfectly to me.
Were you sitting on the idea of putting these tracks together?
Not those tracks in particular, but the idea of that kind of music. Usually when jazz comes into the noise world, it’s free jazz or very classic jazz. You don’t usually think of jazz fusion or smooth jazz with harsh noise, without it being cheeky in some way. But I don’t think it has to be cheeky. I don’t know what’s stopping someone who’s trained in jazz and knows how to mimic Kenny G from getting together with their friends with a table full of guitar pedals and making something cool.
I know you just moved to Woodstock, IL. How does your new home compare to Chicago?
Moving was interesting. It was exciting and terrifying in a multitude of ways, but I’m settled in out here, and I really like it. If where I was living before was 20% my ideal living situation, this is more like 75%. And I think getting to 90% is attainable in the next couple years. And that’s really high, and I’m not too worried about getting to 100%.
So what is the next step, the next 15 or 20%?
It’s a house which is so wonderful. We’re pretty damn close to the neighbors, I could spit on my neighbors’ house. There’s a front and back yard, lots of trees and squirrels, not many people, screaming, or sirens. That 90% would be, I would own a house with a little more space to myself outside. I’m gonna turn into that crotchety old person that doesn’t want anybody bothering them, I want my private little nook, but I’m gonna be really polite. I don’t want them to know I play Fire-Toolz sounds, but I do want to be a contributing member of society and get along with my neighbors and have them trust me and I trust them. But I would rather they be 50 yards away. I want multiple seating areas with bushes and stones and little gargoyles and shit. I wanna get real cute with it, so I need the space to do it. I don’t want to do any of the work to set that up. I’m too tired, and my back hurts, so I’ll hire people.
You grew up in the suburbs, right? Is that something you’re familiar with?
I don’t know, when you think of the suburbs, you tend to think middle class, but it was lower-middle. Not very big houses, a lot of seniors, farms, little communities. Pretty lowkey and very blue-collar. Lots of hard-working families. I lived in a place that had some space around it, and my closest neighbor was my grandmother, so it was like her property was mine too, basically. Growing up, being able to expand like that and be safe was really valuable to me.
Moving to Chicago, all of that is restricted and different. I didn’t like it. So all I’m doing here is trying to get back to where I was. It would be nice to live in Maryland, closer to my parents and sister again, but it’s a bit pricier out there and moving a longer distance is more difficult with three cats who are very sensitive babies. They’d need a lot of drugs.
You would need a Fear and Loathing trunk of cat drugs to transport them.
When I take these guys on the road, they get the recommended dose of the recommended downer, and I feel like it doesn’t do much for the three of them. That was the roughest part of the move was the hour and a half drive, having to listen to them lose their shit. Some of them scream, there’s panting, I don’t like that.
I noticed you also used the word “safe” when talking to the Tribune about your new album. Were you thinking about childhood when working on the Forecast album?
Yeah, I feel like all of those songs sound like what my childhood felt like, when I was enjoying it and I was safe. They don’t exactly sound like songs that would have been around at the time, there’s definitely a flavor I put in there that’s mine, but a lot of the synthesizer sounds and the melodic tendencies are inspired by the music of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It’s not that I was trying to channel my childhood, it’s that this is music I really like to make, and it just happens to bring that up. I don’t know, I don’t really have any intention when I’m making music, I’m just making whatever naturally wants to come out, but it sounds so much like the way my childhood felt. Childhood memories tag along with it, by default.
Is that how albums usually come together for you? You finish a set of songs and look back to say, This is a new Forecast album?
Things come together in the process. Everything starts out as me being in the mood to be creative. A lot of times I go into it knowing which project I’m working on material for. Sometimes it changes, sometimes I’ll work on a Nonlocal Forecast song, then I’ll be like “I wanna get really nutty here,” and it will morph into a Fire-Toolz song. But other than that, I make music because I feel like making music. Concepts usually start to form 25%-50% of the way through building something. I’ll assign meaning to stuff I already made because it will start to speak that meaning the more I hear it.
I have several friends who have totally different kinds of synesthesia, and I know a lot of people get excited to say they have it, so I’m not trying to get on a hype train with it. Sounds and sights definitely have personalities, they speak something to me that words will never be able to express, it’s like a different kind of language. And all sounds have visual elements that I’m seeing in my head. I think that might be a form of synesthesia, or it just so happens that music and sounds correlate with such visceral information. All tied in like a big web.
I like the idea that some songs can switch projects. On the new Nonlocal Forecast album, there’s a song with a credited Fire-Toolz feature.
There was one on the last album as well, obviously featuring myself. They both were originally Fire-Toolz songs, but I like them in the context of Nonlocal Forecast, except some of the elements are a little too aggressive or modern-sounding. So the Fire-Toolz moniker is used to take care of those elements that sound out of place in the context of Nonlocal Forecast. Like the Fire-Toolz track on the first NLF album had pretty harsh synth bass, glitchy electronic drums, and that’s just not usually what you’d hear in an NLF song. I think there’s a couple of other Fire-Toolz songs I could have put on a Nonlocal Forecast album and they’d work, if I’d mixed the drums a little different or something like that.
The idea of having different monikers feels like so many references to me: comic books, Wu-Tang Clan, Gorillaz. Are you into sci-fi and fantasy?
When it comes to entertainment media lately, I gravitate towards things that are relaxing. Or engaging, but not in a way that gets you stressed. Watching a movie, following a good storyline, you’re really going up and down. It puts you through something, you see somebody tormented, then you see them rise from the ashes. I’ve gotta go through that in some way, I’m one of those people who watches movies and can’t be too sucked in. It’s hard not to be moved by it. My choice of media now is just Office re-runs. I listen to a lot of lectures and interviews about interesting stuff, but I feel like my music is where the sci-fi and fantasy happens. [laughs] There’s go-to movies that I’ve seen a million times that inspire me - but again, that’s comfort and safety. It’s stuff I already know, that I grew up with, like Labyrinth.
It’s interesting that you talk about music as soothing and safe, and that you’re not thinking intentionally when you create, because it seems to me that music would give me anxiety! I would think “I need to make XYZ” or “I need to finish this project,” but it seems like that’s not an issue for you. Do you ever encounter anxiety when working on music, or is it totally a balm for you?
There are moments with some anxiety, and it usually comes up when it’s time to make a decision, like time to send my mixes to a mastering engineer. I’ll turn my vocals up and down a fraction of a decibel, make a lot of tweaks. Occasionally I get a little impostor syndrome, but I really don’t deal with that a whole lot. It’s strange because some people I know that making music is the most stressful thing in their life. And that’s terrible, that pisses me off, it’s not supposed to be like that. But, for some reason, I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and although I’ve been in a bunch of bands, I’ve always made music on my own in a creative way. I’m making something a lot more than I’m practicing, and I’ve always been that way. I might have gotten in my 10,000 hours twice or even three times now, but I wasn’t always trying to get better, I was just exploring.
I’m kind of immune to anyone not liking my music. It doesn’t affect me because for one, I think they’re wrong, and for two, it really doesn’t matter. My whole life, I’ve been making music that doesn’t appeal to the masses, so I’m used to not being so many people’s thing! Any time there’s a fan, it’s a big deal, worthy of a celebration, I’m really grateful for that. I’m not trying to make the best music in the world, I’m not even trying to make the best music I can make, I’m purging. I have to throw up, I just gotta go to the bathroom, and this is what comes out.
Do you then feel relief when it’s done and the music is out there for people to hear?
That’s when the relief happens, when the record is released. That’s why I love albums so much, and I’m not looking forward to conforming to Singles-world. I like that big release. I do have a lot of fun making music, and I think that’s my most favorite thing, but my second favorite, or equally favorite thing, is when it’s just out there. I remember running a little tape label, making noise cassettes in editions of 30, and even just posting in a forum on some nerdy website to say “My new tape is out, edition of 30, it’s just circuit bent toys and pedal feedback, $5 dollars postage paid,” just hitting Post on that felt like, “Ah, I can breathe.” It was self-care, a solution, a release, all kinds of great things. But at the same time, I’ve never put much emphasis on trying to get as many people as possible to see it, and I should probably work harder at that. If I had my way, I wish everybody in the world got at least a minute with it, to see what they thought. But I’ve never chased that, I just want to put it out there and let whatever happens happen. That’s what’s great about having a label and people doing PR, they can focus on that and I can just work on music.
Are you still active on forums? How are you finding the music that you’re listening to?
The music I’m listening to. [laughs] I usually find it through my own research and a few algorithms who help me out. For the past four or five years, I’ve been focused on ‘80s jazz fusion and new age music. That’s just where my passion is currently. Discovering that music is digging through old stuff, I don’t get this information from music blogs. A few friends will turn me onto things, and I have a friend with a youtube channel where he uploads stuff from that era, so every couple days I feel like I have more artists to check out. The internet is full of historical documentation. Some sax player that was on some album that had a really nice melody, I’ll go on Discogs and find everything he’s played on, find those artists, and download shit. I regrettably don’t listen to enough new music, but I think metal just never stops being interesting, depending on the subgenre. My side girl is progressive metal, progressive death metal, black metal, jazz fusion-infused metal, so that’s always in my periphery, no pun intended.
Have you thought about doing more collaborations on these newer projects? Doing a new-school version of a jazz album where you get together with other players?
That sounds really nice. I’m not very good at jazz because I didn’t grow up with jazz theory. I grew up with rock and metal. I know a lot of music theory but I don’t know a lot about the jazz ways of breaking the rules of music theory. I try to soak up as much as I can from the internet, and other musicians, and YouTube tutorials. I definitely think I would be able to put together some cool stuff with other musicians, but the other musicians would have to be way better at jazz than I am, they would have to bring more jazz to it than I could provide. I’m good with the dissonant, moody jazz chords and melodies, but anybody who’s trained in jazz learned from Coltrane and Miles Davis. And I didn’t. For a poster boy example, Kenny G is what my jazz theory sounds like. Nonlocal Forecast is fake jazz, it’s me trying my best to do jazz in the way that I want to, and I’m succeeding enough that people who are trained in jazz listen and say “Oh, this is good,” which is very validating. [laughs]
When I talked to Sen Morimoto, he talked about being able to play instruments, but that he’d get laughed out of a practice if he answered a want ad for a guitarist. It sounds like you’re describing something similar: you know the style but it’s not innate to you.
I have jazz artist friends who really truly know the foundation, and I don’t. My education in it is very experimental, wandering around trying to grab up knowledge here and there. It’s not efficient, and it’s not thorough, but that’s the way I do things sometimes. It’s a blessing and a curse, and I think it contributes to my music. I’m good at music and all, but people think I’m a lot better than I am when they listen to it. The good stuff is good because I got there by doing something not the way you would in music school. I’m fudging it, or finding a different way, or I figured out a concept that I don’t know someone else already thought of.
Outside of the jazz context, are you interested in collaborating with artists of any genre?
I think that would be really fun! I’ve never gone about organizing something like that. I like working on my own the best because I can do whatever I want. But one of my favorite things to do when I was playing in bands was join bands that already had a bunch of songs, so I could add my little piece to it.
It just takes a lot of planning, and I guess I’m picky. A lot of people talk about collabs, but I don’t have time to sit around all day and just make music with other people because it’s fun. I really want the stuff I make to solidify and go somewhere. So if I was going to collab with someone, I would wanna talk about the album. Like, who’s gonna release this? I just don’t have time to fuck around.
That said, there’s a lot of musicians I’m friends with that I’d love to get together and make an album with. They need to think of it and come to me. It would be really cool to make an album with my friend Tristan of Euglossine. He’s a jazz fusion guitarist, but he makes totally weird electronic music and fuses it with jazz fusion, but sometimes it’s really poppy and bubbly and fun, and sometimes it’s really out there and heavy on synths. He has a MIDI guitar, so a lot of times his guitar solos are just synths. And he played a guitar solo on two Fire-Toolz songs on two different albums, so we’ve already worked together, but it would be really fun to do an album where each of us contributed. That would come out super crazy.
And it would be really cool to work with Machinegirl, because they’d push me in the opposite direction. I’d have to focus on relentlessness. That would be a great exercise.
There’s just a lot of old jazz people I wish I could make music with, but they would hear my stuff and be like “I don’t understand what is wrong with the kids today.”
I don’t know, maybe you gotta send some emails, you could be surprised. I’m picturing an old Blue Note album cover, but it’s you and some 80-year-old trumpet player.
Oh my god, that would be so cool, that would be great. I bet collaborating with Jon Hassell would be easier, genre-wise. I think he’s incredible. I liked his Listening To Pictures album, there were some new sounds on there. He just started getting into new software or something.
What are you working on next?
Usually when I’m done with one album, I start on the next one. I just finished the next Fire-Toolz album. Now that I’ve done that, I guess I’ll start working on Nonlocal Forecast again. There’s a few collabs I was working on and remixes to do in between. I can’t say much about the collabs, but they’ll be pretty cool.
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